Collaborative Ideas Instead of Discussions

Over the last year, I have been working with the Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction online courses.  With the program director I have developed some online collaborative activities that can work in place of the plain vanilla discussions so often seen in online courses.  Click on any of the images to enlarge.  The first is a VoiceThread embedded, so students can mimic a book talk-round table discussion.

 

The second is a Google Hangout, where students virtually met weekly and the Google Hangouts were recorded and then embedded on a content page, within Canvas, so students could refer back to the Hangouts.

 

The third concept was to have a class of students all simultaneously watch a full-length movie while also engaging in a simultaneous discussion.  For this activity I embedded the movie on a content page within Canvas instructing the students how to download the movie.  Students were told to open the movie in one window, then open the discussion forum in a second window. The professor will have the students start and stop their movies at a specific times so students can then engage in the discussion.

 

At this writing, both the VoiceThreads and Google Hangouts have been very successfully implemented.  The movie viewing will occur at the end of the month.